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Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Blog Tour: ART CROSSED LOVE by Libby Rice - Excerpt and Giveaway

We have an excerpt from Libby Rice's new book ART-CROSSED LOVE today! Make sure you read to the bottom and enter the giveaway!

Art-Crossed Love Synopsis:

Can love be more than a four-letter word?

Lissa Blanc is a painter on a mission. She filters the world through a lens of color, line, and form and hides her ambition behind a delicate smirk that lets her critics believe life comes easy. To her, art isn’t what she sees. It’s what she feels. Few know that behind the glitz of a prodigious upbringing, she’s driven to emerge from the shadow of painful memories that insist she’ll never be a renowned talent in her own right.

Cole Rathlen is a photographer on the mend. A crippling grief has stifled his once-rising career and compromised his creative instincts. Knowing he can’t stagnate forever, he seeks a twisted absolution in the form of a woman whose paintings give life to the emotions he won’t let himself imagine, let alone feel.

When the two partner for a prestigious project that will pull them from the mountains of Colorado to the palaces of India, Lissa quickly realizes that more than diverging ideals hinder their search for success and salvation. Was Cole’s life upended by a tragic but unavoidable choice or something more sinister? While Lissa can’t delve into the mystery but not the man, Cole can’t resist a tenacious soul that refuses to leave him chained. As the truth closes in on a project finally sprouting wings, will Lissa sacrifice her chance at success to set Cole free? Or will Cole shrug the chains of lingering regrets to prove that those who love the most, love again.

Cole took charge before suffering a single bite. He stood and leaned across the table, resting his torso on splayed fingers and straining arms. Flicking his chin toward the door, he said “Go. Please.”

His family began a slow scatter, technically not obeying but at least condescending to clear the table.

Lissa shot to her feet. After all her questions, she still had insufficient answers. If Kent and Rhea and Trevor withdrew, she’d be left with the man most determined to keep her in the dark.

The one she’d most like to see join her there.

Cole’s expression tightened. “Don’t even try it.”

Now what? “You mean doing what you say?” Lissa batted her lashes with feigned innocence. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Kent had disappeared into the kitchen, but Trevor and Rhea were making a snail look speedy.

Ignoring their continued presence, Cole said, “I’ve had enough of this.”

“Good.” Lissa couldn’t agree more. “You’ve spared yourself another ‘scene,’ and we can get back to the original plan. You photograph what you see, and I’ll paint what I—”

“Not that.” Cole’s hand slashed through the air. “I mean the incessant questions. You’re alone with my family for half a meal, and I arrive not to jokes and toasts, but to an interrogation.”

They started it.

“Consider it payback for five days ago when I asked you to select an indoor artistic subject, and you picked a roll of toilet paper.”

“You got your revenge,” he grated, “when you snickered about it being an ‘apt choice’ given that my ‘work is shit.’”

She stacked Cole’s full plate on top of her own uneaten food, shaking her head. “That was for the day before, when you let the dog into my room at five in the morning. He tried to jump onto the bed but only managed to ram the side of my mattress over and over again like a drunken sheep. Eventually I settled him down into a roaring snore that rattled up from the rug for the next three hours.”

“It’s a sign that he likes you.” The animal in question sprawled out at the end of the table and rolled onto his side with a groan.

“And a sign that you don’t.”

“Or a message that I’ll retaliate when you eat every Skittle in the house and leave all the empty bags piled on the kitchen counter.”

He’d noticed. “You know what? Maybe I asked your family about you”—she slid a glance toward Trevor and Rhea, both frozen in mid-step, backs to the action—“because I know you haven’t been honest, and even though I’m sleeping with him, your dog hasn’t spilled the goods.”

Cole pulled the plates from her grip and set them on the table a bit too carefully. Then he crowded her against the chair that threatened the wobbly joints at the backs of her knees. “And they’re going to remedy the oversight? You think Rhea here”—the redhead flinched, keeping her head averted but making no move to disappear—“will roll over and lay me out like a Facebook timeline?”

“You know what they say. ‘If door number one disappoints because it hides a moody, uncooperative ass, check behind door number two.’”

“Right.” He ground his molars together with a cringe-worthy crunch. “And you know what I say.”

Yes, she did. Her eyes flew to his, but not in time to change what was about to happen.

Before becoming a writer, Libby was first a mechanical engineer in the data acquisition industry (voltmeter anyone?). Preferring writing to technical design, Libby headed to law school and eventually practiced patent law for several enterprising years (patent application covering a voltmeter anyone?). Finally realizing that technology just wasn’t her bag, she traded the voltmeters for alpha heroes and the women who love them.
Today, Libby writes contemporary romances from the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where she lives with her husband, a bona fide rocket scientist (he stuck with the voltmeters!). When not writing, Libby loves good food, even better wine, and traveling the world in search of the next great story.
Libby loves hearing from readers! Join the fun at www.libbyrice.com, where you can sign up for Libby’s new-release e-newsletter, or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.